The text of this book was set on the Linotype in a face
called Baskerville, named for John Baskerville ( 1706-75),
of Birmingham, England, who was a writing master with
a special renown for cutting inscriptions in stone. About 1750 he began experimenting with punch-cutting and
making typographical material, which led, in 1757, to the
publication of his first work, a Virgil in royal quarto, with
great primer letters, in which the types throughout had
been designed by him. This was followed by his famous
editions of Milton, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer,
and several Latin classic authors. His types foreshadowed
what we know today as the "modern" group of type faces,
and these and his printing became greatly admired. After
his death Baskerville's widow sold all his punches and
matrices to the SOCIÉTÉ PHILOSOPHIQUE, LITTÉRAIRE ET
TYPOGRAPHIQUE (totally embodied in the person of Beaumarchais, author of THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO and THE
BARBER OF SEVILLE), which used some of the types to print
the seventy volume edition, at Kehl, of Voltaire's works.
After a checkered career on the Continent, where they
dropped out of sight for some years, the punches and
matrices finally came into the possession of the distinguished Paris type-founders, Deberney & Peignot, who, in
singularly generous fashion, returned them to the Cambridge University Press in 1953.

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.